


when i see your light shine (i know i'm home)

by tangerinick



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Gen, for Ethereal: an Altean Lance zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15785754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangerinick/pseuds/tangerinick
Summary: The boy doesn’t make a sound. The man reaches a fingertip through the grate to touch his son’s leg one last time, then calls him a name that’s part lilting L and part rolling R. “Be brave. I love you.”forEthereal: an Altean Lance zine





	when i see your light shine (i know i'm home)

**Author's Note:**

> I had a great time working on my piece for [Ethereal: an Altean Lance zine](https://alteanlancezine.tumblr.com), since the zine was extremely well organised! The PDFs just got sent out, which means I finally get to post it. Enjoy.
> 
> title from: [We're Going Home — Vance Joy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qETfaJXx22g)
> 
> TW for canon-typical violence in the beginning

The sharp purple lights shuttered through the grate flicker to the same rhythms as the fast-approaching screams. Outside, a shadow kneels next to the hiding place, speaking quickly towards the young, huddled boy inside. Tears stream down the young boy’s face as he shivers violently, face blotchy. He whimpers like a wounded animal, too afraid to move.

“You can’t let them know you’re here—it’s just like hide-and-seek.” The man’s voice is low and as gravelly as the rocks on this decimated planet. “I’ll come find you when it’s over, don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be okay, you’ll be safe.”

The boy doesn’t make a sound. The man reaches a fingertip through the grate to touch his son’s leg one last time, then calls him a name that’s part lilting L and part rolling R. “Be brave. I love you.”

The boy sees his father’s face; whose crescent marks glow bright blue. Then he’s gone. The boy ducks his head down, squeezing his eyes shut until he sees stars, and presses his small, chubby hands firmly over his ears. And he waits, waits for his papa to come back and for all the bad things to stop. But try as he might, he can’t drown out the screams.

Outside the dark bubble of the hiding place, the Galra empire destroys an entire planet’s civilization.

* * *

 

“Anyone?”

“They must have taken the survivors into captivity.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you even surprised?”

“No. This is Zarkon’s routine procedure.”

“Remember that, the next time you doubt your loyalty to the Blade.” The tone is dark and dangerous, like a threat.

“I will.”

“Give me the heat-signal scanner. I want to make sure.”

“When have the Galra ever left—“

“Give it to me, Bathos.”

There’s a long silence. The boy stirs, unaware of the scene taking place in the corridor outside.

“Check the vents, over there.” The urgent echo of footsteps. “There’s someone in it.”

The boy starts awake, screaming for his life as the grate is torn open with a high screech. He tries to crawl away, deeper, skinning his knees against sharp edges in the metal, but a tight vice grabs him by the ankle and drags him back out. For a moment, the light is enough to blind him into silence.

“It’s a child!”

“Bathos. Give him to me.” The boy is righted, which is enough to send him back into a thrashing panic. Bathos hurriedly hands him to the other Blade member.

“ _Papa_!”

“Papa isn’t here right now, I’m sorry. But you’re safe. Listen to me. Safe. Everything is okay.” _Safe_. The mask over Ulaz’s face shimmers, and then falls away completely, revealing a natural—and less frightening—face. The boy stills at that, then flings his face into Ulaz’s chest, sobbing loudly; the sound tears into Ulaz’s heart in a way nothing has in several decapheebs, the pure grief of a child.

“Ulaz—“

“Bathos, now is not the moment.”

“Look at his eyes.”

Below the boy’s eyes, two identical marks shimmer like moonlight off the ocean.

“He’s Altean.”

* * *

 

Even the boy notices the tension in the room, settled motionless in Ulaz’s arms as he keeps his eyes pointedly fixed on the argument going about between different members of the Blade. He’s not moving, except for the soft chewing on the skin of his thumb.

“The Blade is no place for a youngling. He must go.” Kolivan paces across the room, obviously angered.

“Kolivan, please,” Bathos pleads. “He could learn.”

“The boy can’t be older than three,” Kolivan counters, moving from angry into furious. His voice thunders through the room. The boy ducks down instinctively. “This is the Blade of Marmora, not a babysitting center.” The doors open with a hiss and an imposing figure stalks towards them. Everyone straightens up automatically. Even the boy blinks blearily.

Krolia regards the room with a cool, cool gaze. Her eyes only settle momentarily on the boy before slipping away back to the front. “Kolivan is right. If the child stays here, he’ll be at an immense risk. It would be our duty to protect him. We can’t afford that, not now.” She turns on Ulaz. “Our only priority is the mission, you _know_ this.”

Bathos opens his mouth, which is—as usual—a recipe for disaster. “Krolia, you, out of all people. You have children, don’t you, of the same age? Wouldn’t you have wanted—“

Before anyone can as much blink, Krolia has Bathos’ immense frame pinned against a wall. He struggles loudly, protesting, until a knife is pressed right up against his throat. Krolia’s face betrays no emotion. “Don’t you dare mention my children again,” she hisses into his ear, only for him to hear.  

Kolivan moves across the room to settle a heavy hand on Ulaz’s shoulder. “We will find a suitable home for him, as soon as possible.”

Krolia lets go of Bathos, who slides down the wall into a crouch, rubbing his neck and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. “I know a family, in the Asterion belt. He will be safe there, perhaps even live a normal life.”

There’s a look in Kolivan’s eyes no one has really seen before. He takes a deep sigh. It’s the first time he’s shown any sort of regret towards the boy. “The child may have human blood in him, Krolia, but he is also half Altean. Probably the last of his kind. He will never live a normal life. Take him away, clean him up. I’ll set course for Asterion.”

“Come with me, little one.” Krolia turns to Ulaz and holds out her arms. Ulaz is hesitant, but he hands her the boy: giving him one last look, he leaves the room without turning around once. Krolia shifts the boy onto her hip, and ignores the sharp pang in her heart as it reminds her of holding her own children in the exact same way. He has the same deep look as Keith, eyes boring into everything around him. Krolia wants to protect him forever—but she can’t. So she suppresses the memory.

“What’s your name?” Krolia asks, later, as they sit in the infirmary. She quickly dabs the antiseptic onto the cuts on the boy’s knees, surprised when he doesn’t even flinch.

The boy refuses to speak, sharp eyes tracing every inch of Krolia’s face like a map. For a small child, his expression is unreadable. Krolia can only wonder what is going on behind it. According to Ulaz, the boy hasn’t uttered a single word since crying out for his father.

Eventually she settles the boy back into her arms, having cleaned and bandaged all his wounds. Unfortunately, there are some wounds only time can heal—the boy still hasn’t spoken, and Krolia can only hope he is young enough to forget whatever he may have seen.

They end up wandering into the armory, because what else is there to show a child on this ship without disturbing the other members of the Blade. Fortunately, the boy actually seems mildly interested. Something like life actually appears in his eyes when Krolia picks out a weapon off the rack and balances it carefully in her other hand.

“Here, what do you think of this one? It’s a broadsword: they say the old kings of Altea used to use one this like, isn’t that appropriate?” Krolia puts it back, and gestures to a long line of guns in all shapes and sizes, behind a nearly transparent casing. These weapons are mainly here as an extra—each member of the Blade has their own personal weapon that takes the shape of a knife outside its evolved form. Krolia left hers on Earth, which Kolivan wasn’t too happy about. But it’s the only thing she could leave that she would be sure her children would remember her by.

“And the guns,” she continues. “Look, this is a sniper rifle. Everyone always greatly undervalues long-distance fighters. But don’t let that get you down, I’m sure with eyes like yours, you could hit targets from a long way away. Of course, I hope you don’t ever have to  _actually_ do that. Life is nicer when you don’t have to use weapons, little one.”

Spotting something on the far wall, she shuffles over and angles the boy so he can take a good look at the weapon. “Aha, a _lance_! I haven’t used one of these in ages. It takes immense skill to fight with one of these, you know. And bravery, because you have to let your opponent get in close with only a stick in hand. A lance is brave.”

“Lance,” the boy suddenly says, voice high and as clear as day.

The word hits heavy in Krolia’s stomach. She forces a smile on her face. “Lance? Do you like this one?”

The boy nods again, and repeats, “Lance.” He makes grabby hands, chubby little fingers grasping in the air for the spear as he leans out of Krolia’s arms. A singular brown curl falls over his face, partly obscuring one of his marks.

Krolia can’t stop herself from letting out a laugh. “Lance, huh?”

* * *

 

Krolia, as remembered through a small child’s time-addled brain, is right: time does heal wounds. Although life does as life does, which means the Asterion belt is invaded by the Galra on Lance’s eighth birthday, and the memory of the Galra invasion and the Blade of Marmora fades into a dusty old shimmer of what it once was. By the time Lance is eighteen, strong and lanky and full of fire, he barely remembers anything outside of his life running through space.

His days are composed of traveling, hitching rides on cargo ships and dodging stray enemies when he can. His nights are composed of wandering around crowded little markets on trading planets, filled with strange scents, loud shouting, and even stranger strangers shoving past him in a hurry to go somewhere he doesn’t know of.

Lance has fun, even when sometimes all he can think of is his next meal or where he’s going to find a bed. He makes friends; he leaves friends. He finds love; he leaves love. He finds home; but it doesn’t feel like home exactly, so he leaves that as well. Nothing can make him stay, the man who wanders around the universe without aim.

Sometimes Lance has nightmares of screaming darkness and a strange man’s face with his own glowing marks. When that happens, he bolts awake, heart pounding and cheeks burning, eyes filled with unshed tears for a life he can’t fully remember. Theoretically, he knows what happened to him—the family in the Asterion belt never let him forget. Someone found him in a claustrophobic vent in the ruins of what was once a stop-over planet for space travelers. He’s a stray, a rogue, an alien with no home planet. His name is Lance, because he couldn’t remember his real name. He’s half human, which is fine, because humans are weirdly wide-spread for such an underdeveloped planet. But he’s also half Altean, which is a heritage he may never show—thank the Universe for shapeshifting abilities—because the Altean civilization is supposed to be gone, destroyed an impossible amount of years ago by the Galra Empire.

If it wasn’t for the dreams of safe arms, a motherly voice, yellow eyes and purplish faces, Lance would really, really hate the Galra.

So Lance survives. But he never really stays.

* * *

 

“We’re so quiznaking screwed.”

“Chill, man.” Rolo sounds even more exasperated with Lance than normal, taking a heaving sigh. “We’ll figure something out.”

Lance paces back and forth like a madman, stalking forward then turning on the sharp heel of his shoe; stalk, turn, stalk, turn. Beezer whirs, lets out a shrill beep, and rolls in front of his set path. Lance simply side-steps around and gets back to pacing. “We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere in space, with a broken ship we can’t fix. There’s not much water left; we _have_ to get moving soon.”

“There’s nothing we can do, Lance,” Nyma says, tugging on his sleeve sharply as he strides past. “We sent out a distress signal.”

“Aren’t humans supposed to be...” Rolo cuts himself off, visibly searching for the right words. “Aren’t they supposed to be calm about everything?”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the history books,” Lance snaps. “Humans are indifferent to a lot of things, but they’re decidedly un-chill. There’s got to be something else we can do, right? Maybe if we route Beezer into the system again—”

Beezer beeps incessantly in protest. “Beezer almost fried last time we tried,” Rolo sighs.

“What about if you go into the engine and Nyma tries—”

“Nyma and I tried that once while we were stuck on planet AG234. Wasn’t pretty.”

“Okay, hear me out on this one. If we take out the automatic—”

“That won’t work, we’ll freeze to—”

“Would you let me finish!” Lance snarls, coming to an abrupt halt. Everyone falls silent. Normally the silences that fall between them are filled with the gentle humming of the ship underneath their feet. Now, there’s nothing but void. Lance hates it. He’s so used to moving, to fighting, to planning; being flung into uselessness like this just feels wrong. Wrong in a way he hates, wrong in a way he’s come to fear.

“Lance,” Nyma starts gently. “There’s nothing we can do except wait.”

Lance sinks down into a crouch in defeat, trying to regulate his out-of-control breathing. “I hate waiting.”

“You and me both.” Nyma slips out of her chair to join him on the—frankly, freezing—floor. Lance opens his arms automatically, and she slips in, settling. Her short, bristly hair tickles his nose when she presses a reassuring kiss on his forehead, but at least this time he doesn’t sneeze. “We’ll be okay,” Nyma says. Lance focuses in on her voice, high and steady and stronger than he is at this moment. “We always are.”

“Guys—” Rolo whisper-shouts, because Rolo never loses his cool.

“We’re having a moment here,” Lance tells him, except Nyma lets go of him like Lance is burning and sprints over to the pilot’s chair. Something's happening. Lance drags himself off the floor and after her, catching himself painfully on the dashboard of the ship in a hurry to see whatever has Rolo so, well, loud.

“Holy crap,” Lance breathes. The vast, infinitely dark emptiness of space is almost completely blanked out by a huge— and Lance means _gigantic_ — ship. It’s sleek, pearly white and glowing blue so definitely not a Galra ship, but Lance is stumped to think of any other aliens that could _possibly_ own a mountain like this. Whoever they are, they mean business.

Rolo nods his head, and comments dryly, “Nice ship.”

 

* * *

 

“Nyma, are you sure about this?” Lance whispers, darting after Nyma into an empty corridor, trying his best not to seem like he’s sneaking. It’s a difficult thing to do when you’ve got multiple flashy belts strapped around your hips and a heavy gun hanging at your side, hidden beneath a dark cloak.

“No one’s going to know if we check it out!” Nyma whispers back, disappearing behind a corner. Lance can barely hear the sound of her footsteps. She has it easy, with her flighty fabric that barely even swishes when she moves.

“They will if they know it’s because we’re planning on _stealing_ these magical robot lions,” he hisses angrily.

Nyma stops so abruptly Lance practically runs into her. She balances him out with a heavy hand on his shoulder, and keeps it there as she looks him seriously in the eyes. “Listen, Lance, if it’ll get us off the Galra shit-list it’ll be worth it.”

“I, for one, do not might being on the Galra empire shit-list if it means not giving them something they want!”

Nyma sighs and turns her back on Lance. “At least do it for the money,” she says. “Imagine how much easier life would be. No more crappy ship, no more going hungry. We could live like royalty.” Her tone is wistful. It’s not something Lance hears very often. He doesn’t like it.

“Okay, first of all, we hate royalty. Second of all, don’t you feel a _little_ guilty about this? Because I do. These weird do-gooders actually saved our asses out there. We’d still be floating around if it weren’t for them.”

Nyma whirls around on him again, jabbing a bony finger into his chest. Lance refuses to take a step back, because despite the support he sometimes needs from her, he’s not a pushover. “Oh, now you’re on _their_ side. Priorities, Lance!”

“Nyma, honey, I love you and Rolo, but I’ve told you before—it’s all fine and dandy when we’re stealing from the Galra empire, but you don’t fuck over the people fighting them. That’s not cool.” Lance makes to get away, but Nyma pulls him back in, flashing that beautiful smile that Lance both loves and hates. He’s a sucker for a pretty smile, and although he doesn’t condone Nyma’s ulterior motive—sneaking a look at one of those lions could be interesting. The stories the paladins of Voltron told them on their arrival were enough to spark his ever-present curiosity.

“C’mon, Lance. We’re just taking a look,” Nyma insists.

Lance sighs, defeated. “One look. Then we’re out of there. Rolo and that beautiful hunk should be finished fixing the ship soon anyway.”

“His name _is_ actually Hunk, you know.”

“Oh, but he is a _hunk_.” Lance winks. Nyma giggles. Argument resolved.

They make their way through long, winding hallways, up-and-down stairs, until Lance is sure they’ll never find them. The only way to lose giant robot lions is apparently to put them in an even bigger ship. Finally, though, they walk down stairs that lead them deeper into the castle, until they get into a pair of wide-open hangar door, several hundred times the size of Lance.

Lance doesn’t even want to bother thinking about the size of the hangar to fit in five huge robot lions, because it’s practically incomprehensible. What’s comprehensible though, are the lions themselves.

Nyma bursts into a sprint, long legs leaping, to get closer to the nearest red lion. “Holy quiznak,” Lance swears, breaking into a run after her. “They weren’t kidding.”

Lance stops right next to Nyma, who stares up at the red lion in pure awe. He follows her gaze, up the miles of scarlet-painted metal, sharp edges, bulky form, until his eyes fall on the dimmed eyes. “She’s beautiful,” Nyma breathes. “Can you imagine—“

Several things happen in quick succession. The red’s lions eyes light up like a bonfire, blazing. Nyma falls back on her ass, tripping over herself to get away as the lion creaks and unhinges her metal jaw to let out a bone-shaking roar that reverberates right through their bodies and rips into the galaxy. At the doors, there’s a loud crash as princess Allura storms into the hangar in a fury, Shiro and the other paladins behind them, demanding to know what they’re doing and what’s happening.

Behind them, Rolo waltzes in. He takes one look at the scene and goes “What the quiznak, guys?”

But Lance isn’t paying attention. There’s a thrum in his veins and his skin is alive and his blood is singing and his thoughts are racing and all he can think of is the piercing yellow eyes of the red lion, boring into his soul and laying him bare. The fire in his bones spreads out, out, up, burning him up until all Lance can feel is the sharp pain radiating from under his eyes. His face feels like the sun, burned and flayed, his marks the white-hot core. Lance realises he’s crying, heavy, quick tears.

All Lance hears through the waves of contentment and pride rolling over him from the red lion, is a single, whispered hiss from the paladins of Voltron.

“ _Altean._ ”

 

* * *

Pidge and Hunk offer to take him to Earth if he joins Voltron. Lance denies. Earth isn’t anything to him but a species he resembles and an empty name. Shiro hesitantly offers to train him in a way that would make Lance the best fighter he’s ever known, brutal and ruthless. Shiro seems to have misunderstood, because Lance doesn’t want to be brutal and ruthless. That’s what the Galra empire is. Lance just wants—he wants—

Allura tells him he can save the universe. That he can destroy the Galra empire, maybe not single-handedly, but with a team. He _can_ . That he can fly, travel to places faster than ever before, see the universe, live his life in a flying castle that will take care of his every need. But in return, he has to sacrifice his life to _one_ cause, to _one_ place, to _one_ group of people until it’s either over for the Galra empire or for him. And Lance is used to running, cutting off friends like Rolo and Nyma if they mean he won’t be able to keep going, keep looking for an impossible thing he’ll never find.

Lance is close to saying _yes_ , but there’s a rage and a drive that’s missing in the decision, which is usually present in everything else he does. If Lance isn’t dedicated to the cause, then what’s the point? He’ll give up and run, he knows he will. And then team Voltron will be worse without him.

In the corner, the black paladin calmly takes out a narrow knife and starts polishing. Keith ignores Allura’s frantic pacing around the room as she tries to convince Lance that this is his destiny—Lance has been quiznaked over by destiny one too many times to believe in it. He ignores Lance’s defensively crossed arms, Rolo and Nyma and the rest skulking in the background. Lance’s eyes focus on the blade: the color and shape are mean something unknown to him in a way that digs into his heart and claws out some shred of emotion. He traces the familiar shape of Keith’s nose, the sharp jut of his chin.

From the muddled murky depth of his memory, he hears a long-forgotten voice as clear as day: _A lance is brave_.

“Okay,” Lance says, startling the room. “I’ll do it.”

* * *

 

So maybe Lance thinks he’ll never really stay for long, too used to running like the universe is nipping at his heels. But this time, he hopes he might. For his dad. For everything he’s lost. For the little boy, unable to drown out the screams of a dying civilization. For the strong arms that gave him a name.

And for every home he might save.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [come find me on tumblr!](http://nikneedsalife.tumblr.com)


End file.
